Canoe Landing Park is an 8-acre urban park in downtown Toronto, adjacent to the Gardiner Expressway in the CityPlace neighbourhood. Situated at 95 Fort York Boulevard, the park serves CityPlace’s high-density community.

Officially opened on September 9, 2009, the park was developed as part of the surrounding condo development and serves as a green oasis in this area’s urban landscape.

The park has a man-made promontory overlooking the Gardiner Expressway, created by 20,000-25,000 dump truck-loads of earth diverted from landfills. This small hill has an elevation allowing viewers to see over the Gardiner Expressway to Lake Ontario if they stand in the red canoe.

The Red Canoe

The park has stand-alone art pieces created by Douglas Coupland, including a canoe large enough for people to stand in, and a colourful display of large fishing bobbers. Unfortunately, the red canoe, which was the centrepiece of the park, was burned in an act of arson on April 2, 2025.

Thankfully I took a few shots of the infamous red canoe – entitled Tom Thomson’s Canoe – prior to its destruction:

Fishing Bobbers

The fishing bobbers are collectively known as Bobber Plaza. In addition to the now-torched canoe, the bobbers were also created by Douglas Coupland as part of the park’s public art installations. The bobbers are designed to reference nearby Lake Ontario to create a sense of “futuristic Canadian energy”:

Terry Fox Memorial

This installation in Canoe Landing serves as a permanent, reflective memorial in the heart of the community, contrasting the mundane with the extraordinary sacrifice of Terry Fox’s journey. The park also hosts the annual CityPlace Terry Fox Run, featuring a 5-kilometre route.

As the plaque below explains, this bottle of champagne was to have been used to toast Terry on the evening he received the Order of Canada. Rather than opening it that night, Terry’s mother, Betty, decided she would open the bottle only when a cure is found for cancer:

The park has the “Terry Fox Miracle Mile”, which loops around the Canoe Landing park; doing two loops of the site equates to one mile.

Terry ran a total of 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles) over 143 days, averaging about 42 kilometres (26 miles) per day, through the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario.